Mafia II: Perfection for NVIDIA’s Graphics Plus Technologies?

Built in Benchmark Performance Analysis

In a recent article, we took the time to look at and analyze the different (or lack thereof) between certain benchmarking methods. In some games, the built-in benchmark provided an accurate representation of in-game performance but in others there was a huge difference between the rolling demo the developer provided versus reality.

Mafia II provides a built-in rolling benchmark that gives a more cinematic view of a section Chapter 5 than the player will ever experience. The scene begins with an assault on a pair of cars and ends within a distillery amidst a firefight. Below we have two situations: the built-in benchmark and the “worst case” scenario we found after playing through the whole game. Our own worst case benchmark sequence is detailed below. Caution: the language contained in the clip below may be offensive to some.

A built-in benchmark is a luxury very few games have but what’s the use of a benchmark when it doesn’t reflect the realities within the game itself? Due to the massive and frankly unrealistic number of particles, chunks of debris and close-in camera angles the CPU performance of our setup was severely hindered in some cases when compared to even the worst case in-game scenario.

However, the other tests which didn’t rely on CPU generated physics both methods were actually quite close in comparison. We’re of the opinion that the addition of built-in benchmarks should be applauded but only when they have a firm grounding in reality. In this case 2K wins a polite round of applause from us due to their benchmark actually reflecting in-game performance…in most cases at least.

More than four months after the launch of NVIDIA's GTX 1060, we take another look at its performance against AMD's RX 480 8GB in more than a dozen games. The results of this one may surprise you........